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60,000 Hens Trapped and Drowned in 2023 Italian Flood

From WeAnimalsMedia.org
July 2023

The farm housed approximately 130,000 hens in two barns and the flood killed more than half of the birds. The 'survivors' were moved to another barn.

drowned Hens

Countless dead hens drowned by flood waters lie caught inside cages infiltrated by flood waters on an Italian egg-production factory farm.

Extreme weather in May 2023 caused mudslides and massive flooding, severely affecting numerous factory farms. An overflowing river next to this farm caused a landslide, destroying the chicken sheds and killing over 60,000 chickens. Any surviving chickens are being caught and moved to a similar type of farm. San Lorenzo in Noceto, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, 2023. Selene Magnolia / Essere Animali / We Animals Media

The deadly floods that engulfed the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna in mid-May of 2023, killing at least 14 people and thousands of farmed animals, are another sign of the accelerating climate crisis, according to researchers. The floods come after years of severe drought in the region, which has compacted the soil, reducing its ability to absorb rainfall.

The egg-laying hen farm in these images is located near a river and when the river overflowed, the swell of water was so powerful that it washed away the soil under the barns, causing a landslide. The farmer told us that in the 50 years the farm has been here, nothing like this has ever happened.

The farm housed approximately 130,000 hens in two barns and the flood killed more than half of the birds, most of them young pullets who had only recently been moved here. The farm is a complete loss and the farmer will not rebuild. Instead, he told us, he will move the surviving animals to one of his other farms.

Emilia-Romagna is—together with Lombardy, Veneto and Piedmont—one of the regions with the largest number of farmed animals and intensive farms in Italy, with more than 20 million poultry and over 1 million pigs raised per month according to the National Livestock Registry Database.

A number of factory farms have been severely affected by the recent floods. Tens of thousands of animals have drowned or been crushed as buildings collapsed during landslides.

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